More symptoms re The crippled resurrection of the moribund etch.

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

Rebooted to etch today, single-user mode, it seemed to 
work, ran aptitude, did a general upgrade, which had a few problems, but 
upgraded almost everything.
The following packages did not configure properly:
 udev
 initramfs-tools
 hal
 kdebase

I reran it using script, and this seems to be the important part of the 
output (I append its context below):

...
Setting up udev (0.100-2.2) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-k7
Fatal: chroot /dev/root: Not a directory
dpkg: error processing udev (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
...


Just to make sure what was up with /dev/root, I did an ls -l, and was 
told it had existed.  Unfortunately I can't find the script file I 
thought I had generated.  But it had found a /dev/root, and the first 
character in the permissions section of the ls output was a 'b' 
instead of the desired 'd' for 'directory'.  Now that I'm running in the 
sarge I have on the same system, to post this messate, the relevant file 
within the etch partition is completely absent.  So it looks as 
if something had been mounted on /dev in the etch system, presumably a 
part of normal boot-up, but probably the wrong thing.

-- hendrik

--------

P.S. For completeness, here's the context of the relevant part of the 
log:

(Reading database ... 245952 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace msttcorefonts 1.2 (using .../msttcorefonts_1.3_all.deb) ...
W: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/Arial_Black.ttf: not registered.
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/msttcorefonts_1.3_all.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
warning: /usr/share/fonts/X11/truetype does not exist or is not a directory
warning: /usr/lib/X11/fonts/truetype does not exist or is not a directory
These fonts were provided by Microsoft "in the interest of cross-
platform compatibility".  This is no longer the case, but they are
still available from third parties.

You are free to download these fonts and use them for your own use,
but you may not redistribute them in modified form, including changes
to the file name or packaging format.
All fonts downloaded and installed.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/msttcorefonts_1.3_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up udev (0.100-2.2) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-k7
Fatal: chroot /dev/root: Not a directory
dpkg: error processing udev (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of initramfs-tools:
 initramfs-tools depends on udev (>= 0.086-1); however:
  Package udev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of hal:
 hal depends on udev (>= 0.065); however:
  Package udev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing hal (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdebase:
 kdebase depends on hal; however:
  Package hal is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing kdebase (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 udev
 initramfs-tools
 hal
 kdebase
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